Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1887-07-01

]
and its broadcast culture. Statistics, how
ever. show that six only of the nineteen
strong and influential journals in the five
great commercial ccnters of the country
are edited by classically educated men;
that they give employment to S2l per-
sons, of whom only 222, a fraction more
than 2G in the hundred. have avaled
themselves of the advantages that the
American college offers to the young men
of the country.
! There must be some adequate cause
for this rather startling exhibit-some
reason why men with an academic cu-
ture are practically debarred from pro-
fesson that demands not only the chiv-
alrc heart and the ready brain. but also
the most thorough discipline that the
college can furnish as an equipment for
a scholarly life.
There are, | think. four causes that
conspire to produce this result. two of
which are chargeable to the student
himself and two to the institution that
partially educates him. And, first, the
vast majority of college students are
country-born and bred The journals
these Young men see in their youth come
to them as do books. with little more
regularity. perhaps. but they as rarely
suggest to them the profession of Jour
nalsm as do the books that of author
ship. All their ideas of a newspaper are
gathered from the hebdomadal print of
the country village. which awakens
neither their regard no their interest. The
day that such lad enters upon his prep
aration for college his interest in current
events is gone-utterly abandoned as an
impeachment in his race for scholarship !;
until, in spirit, he is alien to an age and
country the symboisms of which are
tireless energy and breathle-- Impotence.
Is it strange that as he stands, diploma
in hand, upon the threshold of new
life he is not attracted to the profession
os journalism. that simply reflects the
activity and energy of the world around
him:
\ second cause. ! think, may be found
in the fact that most students have made a
choice of their vocation before they ma
circulate. such a selection is too often
made by an ambitious father or fond
mother. AS general rule the good and
Flooding boy is trained for the pulpit or
teaching, the wild and shrewd one for
the bar, while such a have neither the
morality required for the one nor the
adrOitness demanded by the other find
congenial employment in the practice of
medicine. In any event the supply Is
exhausted before the American newspa-
per can present its claims or make its de-
mands. | believe that if more students
would delay the selection of a prOfes sion
until they have been out of college a
year large number of them would be
attracted to journalism.
But the influences and the training at
college are "a sovereign as the students
own preference in determining the choice
of professo ion. The professor of Greek,
Latin or mathematics too frequently
knows little else. and he is seldom re-
garded by his own pupils as an authority
on any other subject. The inspiration
of the pupils is caught from the teacher.
but that teacher who is in>ensible to the
primum mobile in the energy and activi-
ty of current thought fails of accom-
plishing all that he might (or the best
that he might with the plastic materi-
ais from which he is To evolve that high
est product of divine creation and human
culture-a scholarly American citizen.
Without such training and influence. the
student is further from being fitted for
journalism upon his graduation from
than at his entrance upon his college
course.
And lastly, to whichever of the other
learned profe, SiOnS the studies of the col
lege curriculum are adiuvant they are
not auxiliary, except in an exceedingly
limited degree, to that of journalism.
The student at college is taught the ca>-
sizes of Greece and Rome. bur il i, rugged
Anglo-SaXon that the press and its read
ers demand: he learns elegance of die
ton, but it is vigor of express lion that he
needs he is trained in the modes and
methods of logic and metaphysics when
he requires infinitely more rapidity as
well a accuracy in his mental processes.
He Is graduated with better knowledge
of the Achaian league than of the con-
Stitution of the United States he is bet
ter informed a, to the conspiracy of Cat
aline than a to the Hartford convention.
and he knows more of the Ars Poctca
than of the subtlities of American poll
tics. In his preparatory and in his col
legiate course the student i kept for
seven years from the very experiences
which are absolutely indispensable to the
competent journalist, and from contact
with an environment with which it is all
important that he should be III earnest
and enthusiastic sympathy. What COM
pensation does he receive for this self
surrender to alien influences: Practic-
ally none that is vital TO journalism. |
have no sympathy with that senseless
clamor that would eliminate from our
educational system everything that cam
not be coined into dollars and cents, and
in the name of a more progres sive educa-
ton protest against such an attempt to
prostitute the high ideal that is the guild
ing star of all culture. Utility is not,
and it never can be made. the test of
education. But while this i true. | do
insist that new demands are made by our
civilization upon our colleges and that
they cannot be ignored. These require
ments are that the American college shall
do its work with more thoroughness-
that its aim shall be 1.-THE development of
man, and the whole man as man"
Dr. Talmage said in an address last
year in New York: Il declare that the
newspaper printing-press is to be the
mighty agent by which the gospel is to
be preached, crime extirpated, oppression
dethroned, the world raised, heaven re-
joiced, God gloritied."
| appeal TO you to give me if you can
] lx-tl i.